income and expenditure form

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after recieving several threatening letters from solicitors acting on behalf of bradford and bingley we completed the income and expenditure form.The morgage was in joint names between my husband and his ex-partner.As far as we are aware the first correspondence recieved from B&B Was to my husband in feb. of this ear.Unfortunately his ex-partner refuses to discuss the situation but we do know that up until recently she held a savings account with B&B prior to taking the morgage on.I am unable to work due to depression and our financcial circumstances are due to be radically reduced .Can we retract the completed form? and ask for proof of the debt? please help!

-- joanne revie (jp04@btinternet.com), July 07, 2001

Answers

I understand that it is theoretically possible to 'resile' (retract) an admission of civil liability, in law, if it ever comes to court. However, if you feel you were pressured or duped into completing an I&E form, especially as you suffer from depression, it is arguable that you didn't necessarily mean to admit liability anyway. people do all kinds of things when they're under stress, or lacking specialist information. (In fact, the lenders rely on this uneven balance of power precisely in order to coerce people to making hasty settlement offers.)

I would say that the most important thing is to begin to ask for proof of the lender's claim. If it were me I would say that I was unhappy about the pressure tactics used to make me complete that form, complain to the Information Commissioner, and read this site in order to see how to ask the lender to substantiate its claim. The Information Commissioner (who 'polices' the Data Protection Act) is particularly interested in cases where lenders [falsely] imply that ex borrowers have some kind of legal obligation to provide personal data on themselves and on new partners, or uses threats of court etc to extract personal data from people who would otherwise be reluctant to part with that data.

I would be particularly interested in whether the lender marketed the house properly and sold it for a fair market price. Do all their charges and accounts add up? Have they shown the deed, the MIG, the valuations? How do you know you actually owe what the lender says you owe? It's all on this web site.

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), July 09, 2001.


I have a letter from my lender which threatens legal action or a visit from "one of their agents" if I didn't contact them within ten days from the date of the letter, which was dated....you guessed it...seven days prior to the date I received it on the Friday. It would have been out of time by the Monday - the earliest I could have responded. The letter was attached to an I&E form with newspaper clippings stapled to it showing how borrowers were being successfully sued by Lenders. At the time it really frightened me, but I had the foresight to keep it exactly as was received. These days I think I could sue them for that little stunt. (Lee has a copy of the clippings!)

-- Too scared to say (iwasduped@yahoo.com), July 09, 2001.

First some questions:

1) When was the repossession? More than 6 years ago? 2) What date was the first contact made?

Now my bits:

I agree with everything Elenaor says. Ask for documents etc etc. The income of your partner is none of their business and they cannot ask for it.

-- Matt (mattyc@ntlworld.com), July 10, 2001.


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